TRANSFORMERS TOYS AND MERCHANDISE SECTION

Blackjack's review: Ejector the Toaster

Name: EjectorAllegiance: DecepticonSize Class: Scouts Class

So, back in the hype for the first live action movie, there was a Mountain Dew commercial featuring a transforming toaster done in the Bayformer style. It was quite hilarious as a throwaway thing. Come Revenge of the Fallen, Michael Bay decides to expand on everything which fans love from the first movie. One of them is the fact that the Allspark was able to bring objects like cell phones and X-Boxes and Mountain Dew dispensers to life.

So why not an entire kitchen?

And thus the Appliancebot scene was born, which was all good fun. There was a vacuum cleaner with a cannon like Ironhide’s, a fire-spitting cappuccino machine, a phut-phut-phut-ing spike-covered garbage disposal that charges around like a stupid little pit bull, a beetle-like Aeronet thing, rather generic stand mixer and microwave robots… and, in Bay style, there was a blender who transforms into a robot with a giant face and a big gun on his crotch.

Oh Bay.

The last of these Appliancebots, however, was the toaster seen in the Mountain Dew commercial. The exact same model, albeit touched-up a little to fit with the movie’s standards, and given nun-chucks. The toaster totally nun-chucked Sam’s leg!

And then Hasbro saw fit to give this toaster guy a Scouts class toy, rechristened ‘Ejector’ and plonked into the Decepticon faction. Parts of the fandom went all ecstatic over this, because LOL TOASTER TOY. I guess the sheer ridiculousness of owning a transforming toaster got the better of me, and plus, Ejector was totally a show character, and I wanted at least a version of each show character. So I got Ejector. After the novelty of his alternate mode has waned off… he’s a crappy toy.

Alternate Mode:
See, with the Real Gear Robots from the first movie, there were some things you could do with them, at least. There was a watch, there was a camera, binoculars… you can interact with them. Pretend you’re using them, or that larger Transformers are using them. Ejector is… a toaster. A tiny toaster. The cameras and cell phones and watches were at least approximately the same size as their real-life counterparts, which added to their charm.

Ejector is a toaster. A block.

He doesn’t even have a fake lever to simulate inserting bread or anything.

He’s just a block, with an awkward-looking extension cord extending from one end. And he’s not even a good block. He’s mostly silver, with close to no detailing anywhere. Join lines break apart the toaster’s smooth sides, and there’s even a gap where some of his robot modes could be seen if you look at it from where the extension cord attaches. It’s a terrible-looking gap, it’s not even smooth.

Ejector is very bare, with only silver paint (which would probably chip and scrape something terrible) and minimal paint applications for buttons. It’s a silver brick. It’s only a toaster because the packaging tells us it’s a toaster. There’s absolutely no indication that it’s a toaster of any kind. There’s a sheer lack of effort put into making Ejector. I mean, it’s a brick. It’s a silver brick with knobs and an extension cord attached to it. A knob is coloured black, a switch is coloured red bordered with black. Not even the bread slots are coloured. The least they could’ve done is make it attractive.

Robot Mode:
Ejector unfolds through a relatively complex transformation for his size, and the result is very, very… underwhelming. Ejector’s two shades of grey, with some reddish-orange detailing, probably to simulate the heating coils inside a toaster. It’s a very bad shade of orange, and doesn’t look anything like the movie model’s version of glowing filaments. The two shades of grey are very bland, and Ejector is certainly lacking in any sort of molded details.

Ejector’s head is a very terrible looking sculpt, which baffled me. The movie model has a rather generic-looking Bayformer face, jaws with teeth and a spiky head. The ‘cool’ Bayformer head, not the Skids-and-Mudflap Bayformer head. This one… looks like Megatron crossed with a bulldog, then squashed flat, hit several times with a hammer and then ran over by a truck. It’s flat, it’s got ugly googly-looking mismatched eyes that are certainly not part of the movie’s sharp aesthetics. Ejector’s got an ugly, gaping mouth, which, while posable, looks very ugly. It looks uglier than Mudflap, and that is saying something. It’s inaccurate to boot, and completely ugly.

Ejector’s extension cord ends up as his tail, which sort of makes it look quite good. His feet, however, are skinny little affairs, with a very small surface area on which to balance him on! Have fun making him stand up without support.

Unlike the movie model’s two arms, the designers went mental and gave Ejector four. Two are on hinges and basically can’t do anything, while the other two are on ball joints, and the hands can open and close. Not that it’s good for anything, mind you. The tail’s too short to be used as a flail weapon, and while they could’ve included a nunchuck accessory, they didn’t.

It’s a terrible robot that turns into something vaguely resembling a toaster. After about five seconds of weak amusement, this thing ceases to be anything but.

Marks out of ten for the following:Transformation Design: 1/10 It’s very crappy, since the transformation produces an extremely ugly, inaccurate and crappy robot mode. It isn’t fun to do, in any case.

Durability: 9/10 Paint aside, Ejector is a very durable toy. I’ve dropped him, threw him against walls, stepped on him… and still he looks at me with that blank, stupid look.

Aesthetics: 1/10 Toaster mode isn’t so much of a toaster as a multi-segmented silver brick. Robot mode is an ugly piece of crap.

Articulation: 3/10 He’s got nice ball-jointed arms, but the rest of him can’t articulate much without him toppling over due to the teeny tiny feet.

Fun: 2/10 When I was a kid Ejector was always the Decepticon that died first.

Price/Value: 0/10 Scouts class toys were more expensive in ROTF than in previous lines, and while many Scouts class toys aren’t very good, at least Dune Runner, Rollbar, Dirt Boss and its ilk are still average decent Transformers. Ejector is a piece of junk.

Overall: 0/10 Even as a kid, when I bought him, I wasn’t very excited about Ejector. He transforms from a brick of a toaster into a messy robot. Yay? Hell, I wrote excited reviews for Chromia and many other rubbish toys, and even then the younger me hated Ejector. He’s obviously a cheap joke made by Hasbro employees, and I’m ashamed that I even considered buying him. It's a shame, really... I'd really hoped he would turn out to be something good, the concept of a transforming toaster was all in good fun. But Ejector turned out just that -- a joke.